A final pairing of Berlin Wall-related shots from 1985 (a section of the wall itself) and 1988 (a sweatshirt given to me the day after the Bruce East Berlin Concert that Ive kept). Twenty-five years ago tonight I turned on the tv and was mesmerized by what I saw. All those people swarming on top of, and breaking gaps through the Berlin Wall. A Wall I thought might never come down. A Wall that I walked next to for several miles in 1985, and crossed in 1988. Its not just that you had to be there to understand my excited and almost-happy-pacing-back-and-forth-agitation-wish-I-were-there reaction at watching all those kids just whacking away at it with anything they could get their hands on. It has to do with more on top of that... For us baby boomers, we remember- even vaguely- its original construction like a scar (as this pic portrays) through Berlin in 1961. We recall Kennedys Ich bin ein Berliner and his death not long afterwards. Through the years and the Cold War, its presence was always a reminder of something ominous. Its fall in some ways was indeed an end of an era... That sweatshirt- which I thought a little presumptuous when I was first handed it- turned out to be somewhat prophetic... But there are walls that exist now. And the best way for traditional American Liberalism to attack those walls is NOT so much by becoming mirror images of Fox News/Daily Caller/etc. etc. But by holding to the truths that we see. Sharing the experiences weve had. Always question. Always search. Always learn... As I later catch what news coverage there may be of this 25th Anniversary, I need to thank once again Erik Kirschbaum and Eva C. Schweitzer for so generously and totally unexpectedly giving my recollections the space they did in the front(!) of Eriks Updated edition of his book Rocking The Wall... I am indeed honored...
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 17:57:38 +0000
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